Can you sign an NDA before we share artwork and dielines?

Short answer: Yes, and we sign it before you send anything sensitive — not after. A mutual NDA covers artwork, dielines, formulations and volumes. It costs one email and removes the reason most brands delay the first real conversation.

What buyers usually want to know is narrower than the legal question: if I send my design, who inside the factory sees it, and what stops it appearing on someone else's packaging next season. That is answerable in plain operational terms.

What the NDA should actually cover

A one-page mutual NDA is enough if it names the right things. Generic confidentiality language leaves the useful parts ambiguous.

Who sees your files, in practice

Confidentiality is an access-control problem before it is a legal one. The answer that matters:

Two people, by name. An account manager and one production engineer. Prepress receives the file only when a job is scheduled, and the file is version-locked with a date and a hash.

No shared drives across clients. Artwork lives in a per-client folder; the die goes into a rack position assigned to you, labelled with your client code rather than your brand name.

Nothing is published. Samples shown in our portfolio — including IP work — are covered by the client's permission, because the licence sits with the brand owner and our client, not with us.

Three clauses that cause friction

Governing law. Chinese suppliers usually propose PRC law; US buyers propose their own state. For an order of this size, agreeing to the buyer's law with a named arbitration venue is common and rarely a deal-breaker.

Residuals. Suppliers sometimes ask to exclude "general know-how" from confidentiality. For a hydrocolloid matrix this is where the real risk sits — define it narrowly or refuse it.

Term. Three to five years is standard. Tooling and artwork ownership should survive the term.